22 July 2008

No caffiene after 6:00pm

It's 10:00am and I'm having a breakfast that consists of Pepsi and Wheat Thins because I'm too lazy to make a real breakfast for just me. That's right--the girl who cleans every piece of plastic, aluminum, and glass before she puts them into recycling, who organizes and then reorganizes her physical space for peace of mind, who normally wouldn't even have a soda with a meal or eat foods too high in sugar, fat, or salt--is taking the easy way out and is not apologetic for it.

I had yet another sleepless night last night (2nd time this week). I tried every trick in the book to help myself become sleepy: reading, watching TV, checking my email. None seemed to work. And if I still only had those phenomenal sobakawa pillows. I have some regret in returning them back to Target because for the week that we owned them, Michael and I both zonked out the minute our heads touched them. Problem was, they were too small. It finally occured to me that the reason I couldn't sleep was due to the fact I had consumed caffiene too late in the day--somewhere around 7:00 with my dinner--and it kept me wired. After my morning Pepsi, my caffiene intake will have to cease...until tomorrow.

When I went to check on our patio jungle this morning, every one of our beautiful tomato plants had toppled over from the gale force winds of last night's storm. The plants are too big and too heavy for their pots, so Michael and I have tried leaning them against various walls and each other so they wouldn't have room to move. Guess Mother Nature wins. I'll have to add one more thing to my list of things to do today: buy bigger, sturdier pots for our tomato plants. And maybe tomato cages, too.

Big plans next week. I get to move into my new classroom in Winder. New because it will be my first year at this particular school and because the physical classroom was recently constructed. Three cheers for new carpet! I feel that this is what the cosmos owe me for being stuck in my last classroom. Yeah, the one that kept me ill for 2 years straight with bronchitis, the flu, and various head and chest colds. There is so much mold, mildew, and various pests in that room (and whole section of the school building, for that matter) that I wish a health inspector would come through and deem it uninhabitable. Maintenance men who would come out to fix my leaky faucet or clean out the filter in the A/C unit used to complain about doing any work in this part of the school building, which is appropriately named the "Earth Shelter." It is literally built into the earth. You have to walk down a tunnel/hall from the main buildling to get to it, and once you're in the Earth Shelter, you're under a hill of dirt. Anyone can walk across the top of it, as there is a sidewalk and sets of stairs on both sides of the hill. All 6 classrooms have doors that open up to the playground behind it. But the poor teacher #7 who gets stuck teaching in the hallway area called the "pod" outside these classrooms due to lack of space in the rest of the school has no emergency exit convenient to her because if an emergency exit existed at the end of the hall, it would lead her into a 30-year-old wall of Georgia red clay. She could go through one of our classrooms for our exit doors--but then again, our whole school is on permanent lock down and she would need someone to let her in first. Unless they have a classroom in the Earth Shelter, none of your co-workers will come to visit you there. It's like they believe "Earth Shelter" is synonymous with "black hole." Yeah, I got used to walking out of the tunnel if I needed anything.

We're currently searching for our first home, as apartment life has worn us down. We meet with our real estate agent on Friday to look at a house in Jackson County (click here to see: http://framing.usamls.net/framing/default.asp?content=expanded&this_format=1&f_id=RTS%5DZ%5BWWWW%5BZ%5DSTR&mls_number=904031), but we have a list of about 10 more we're also ineterested in. What are we looking for in a house?1. a big yard (for garden space--so the tomatoes won't be blown over)2. a garage (years of sun exposure have not been too kind to our trucks)3. storage space4. a nice kitchenWe'll also need things like room for kids or couch crashers, but I figured it went without saying. I can post more homes of interest later.